Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 May 23; 114(21): 5401–5406.

Published online 2017 Apr 11. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1617395114

PMCID: PMC5448192

PMID: 28400516

From the Cover

Psychological and Cognitive Sciences

Community trust reduces myopic decisions of low-income individuals

Jon M. Jachimowicz,a,1 Salah Chafik,a Sabeth Munrat,b Jaideep C. Prabhu,c and Elke U. Weberd

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See commentary 'Trust and the poverty trap' in volume 114 on page 5327.

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SIGNIFICANCE

More than 1.5 billion people worldwide live in poverty. Even in the United States, 14% live below the poverty line. Despite many policies and programs, poverty remains a domestic and global challenge; the number of US households earning less than $2/d nearly doubled in the last 15 y. One reason why the poor remain poor is their tendency to make myopic decisions. With reduced temporal discounting, low-income individuals could invest more in forward-looking educational, financial, and social activities that could alleviate their impoverished situation. We show that increased community trust can decrease temporal discounting in low-income populations and test this mechanism in a 2-y field intervention in rural Bangladesh through a low-cost and scalable method that builds community trust.

Keywords: temporal discounting, poverty alleviation, trust, decision making, community

ABSTRACT

Why do the poor make shortsighted choices in decisions that involve delayed payoffs? Foregoing immediate rewards for larger, later rewards requires that decision makers (i) believe future payoffs will occur and (ii) are not forced to take the immediate reward out of financial need. Low-income individuals may be both less likely to believe future payoffs will occur and less able to forego immediate rewards due to higher financial need; they may thus appear to discount the future more heavily. We propose that trust in onersquo;s community—which, unlike generalized trust, we find does not covary with levels of income—can partially offset the effects of low income on myopic decisions. Specifically, we hypothesize that low-income individuals with higher community trust make less myopic intertemporal decisions because they believe their community will buffer, or cushion, against their financial need. In archival data and laboratory studies, we find that higher levels of community trust among low-income individuals lead to less myopic decisions. We also test our predictions with a 2-y community trust intervention in rural Bangladesh involving 121 union councils (the smallest rural administrative and local government unit) and find that residents in treated union councils show higher levels of community trust and make less myopic intertemporal choices than residents in control union councils. We discuss the implications of these results for the design of domestic and global policy interventions to help the poor make decisions that could alleviate poverty.

Low-income individuals are more likely to make myopic decisions that favor the short-term but neglect long-term outcomes (1, 2). People living in poverty are more likely to discount future payoffs compared with wealthier individuals, which can in part be attributed to the specific environment in which these decisions are made. From US households (3) to rural Ethiopian farmers (4), lower wealth predicts higher temporal discount rates. A myopic orientation, in turn, makes it less likely individuals escape poverty as they fail to engage in behaviors that benefit them in the long term, such as investing in education, health, and finances (1, Proc Natl Acad Sci US A. 2017年5月23日;114（21）：5401-5406。

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在线发布2017年4月11日doi：10.10/pns-1617395114

pmc5448192

结论：28400516

从封面

心理学和认知科学

社区信任减少了低收入人群的短视决定

jachimowicz乔恩M.......,a,1 该chafik,a Sabeth Munrat,b jaideep prabhu C。，c和（Elke Weber U。d

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见评论“信任和贫困陷阱“请参阅第5327页第114卷。

这篇文章已经被引用PMC的其他文章。

意义

全世界有超过15亿人生活在贫困之中。即使在美国，仍有14％生活在贫困线以下。尽管有许多政策和方案，贫困仍然是国内和全球的挑战;收入低于2美元/天的美国家庭数量在过去15年中几乎翻了一番。穷人保持贫困的一个原因是他们倾向于做出近视决定。随着时间贴现的减少，低收入人群可以在前瞻性的教育，金融和社会活动上投入更多资金，以减轻他们的贫困状况。我们表明，增加的社区信任可以减少低收入人群的时间贴现，并通过建立社区信任的低成本和可扩展的方法在孟加拉国农村进行2-y的实地干预来测试这种机制。

关键词：时间贴现，扶贫，信任，决策，社区

摘要

为什么穷人在涉及延迟支付的决策中做出短视的选择？对于较大的，后期奖励的即时奖励要求决策者（i）相信未来的收益将会发生，并且（ii）不会被迫从财务需求中立即获得奖励。低收入个人可能不太可能相信未来的收益会发生，并且由于更高的财务需求而不太可能放弃立即的回报;因此，它们可能会更加严重地打击未来。我们建议对一个社区的信任 - 我们发现，与普遍信任不同，我们发现它与收入水平不相关 - 可以部分抵消低收入对近视决策的影响。具体而言，我们假设具有较高社区信任度的低收入个体做出较少的近视跨期决策，因为他们认为他们的社区将缓冲或缓冲他们的经济需求。在档案数据和实验室研究中，我们发现低收入人群中较高水平的社区信任导致较少的近视决策。我们还通过孟加拉国农村地区的2个社区信任干预来测试我们的预测，涉及121个工会理事会（最小的农村行政和地方政府单位），并发现经过治疗的工会理事会的居民表现出更高的社区信任水平，并减少近视跨期选择比控制工会理事会的居民。我们讨论了这些结果对国内和全球政策干预措施设计的影响，以帮助穷人做出可以减轻贫困的决策。

低收入人群更有可能做出有利于短期而忽视长期结果的近视决策（1, 2).与较富裕的个人相比，生活在贫困中的人更有可能对未来的收益进行贴现，这可能部分归因于做出这些决定的具体环境。来自美国家庭（3）埃塞俄比亚农村农民（4），较低的财富预测较高的时间贴现率。反过来，短视方向使得个人摆脱贫困的可能性降低，因为他们未能长期参与有益于他们的行为，例如投资于教育，健康和财务（1, 5, 6).这造成了恶性循环：贫困导致短视的选择反过来导致贫困（7).但是，为什么穷人更有可能做出近视决定，以及可以设计哪些干预措施来推动他们的长期决策呢？

三个广泛的理论观点解决了为什么穷人出现近视。经济观点将穷人视为与社会其他人一样以理性方式参与其目标的行动的人（8, 9).然后，穷人做出短视决定，因为他们没有机会减轻他们的贫困状况。在他们的情况下，他们尽力而为。社会学视角描述了穷人的决定，这种决定源于“贫困文化”，往往带来误入歧途的目标和动机（10, 11).低收入个人的决策与他们的长期利益相悖，因为他们重视不同的目标。最后，最近提出的心理学观点表明，贫困会影响穷人如何处理信息（7).由于与贫困有关的问题消耗了精神资源，因此他们减少了其他任务的能力。这反过来促进了更高的折扣，因为穷人无法为未来做好充分的计划（1, 2).所有三种观点的共同点是假设低收入和高收入人群在交换跨期选择时共享类似的计算逻辑。他们之所以提供这种逻辑偏差的原因，提出缺乏机会，缺乏教育或心理带宽有限（1, 2, 8, 10–12).

我们建议一种相关但不同的可能性，即穷人从事不同类型的心理计算。即使考虑接受延迟支付，也需要相信延迟的收益会发生（13, 14）以及放弃即时支付的能力（15).因此，虽然高收入人士可能会问，“今天是否延迟支付100美元，价值85美元？”，低收入人士可能会问，“我认为我真的会得到延迟的回报吗？”和“我能负担得起吗？”放弃直接收益？“这种悲

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